Disclaimer: This material is being kept online for historical purposes.

LITE

...
a view from space

Lidar In-space Technology Experiment

LITE was a three-wavelength
backscatter lidar developed by NASA Langley Research Center to fly on the Space Shuttle to support
advancement of knowledge of Earth as a system to meet the chanllenges of environmental changes, and
to improve life on our planet.

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LITE flew on Discovery in
September 1994 as part of the STS-64 mission.

...
the goals of the mission

validate key lidar technologies for spaceborne applications

explore the applications of space lidar

gain operational experience to benefit the development of future systems on free-flying satellite platforms.

...
the final results

LITE was operated for 53 hours, resulting in over 40 GBytes of
data covering 1.4 million kilometers of ground track.

These data provide the FIRST highly
detailed global view of the vertical structure of cloud and aerosol from the
Earth's surface through the middle stratosphere.

LITE provided
views of multilayer cloud structures.

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LITE provided sensitive observations of the
distribution of desert dust, smoke, and other aerosols.